U.S. Water News Online
GARDEN CITY, Kan. -- New regulations approved last month to punish irrigators that overpump their wells have added more bureaucratic appeal levels, making it harder for state regulators to suspend water rights.
While the chief water engineer is empowered to now issue a ``cease and desist order'' for overpumping, words like "suspension" and "dismissal" are lacking in the new penalties and regulations.
``The (Kansas) Water Appropriation Act has no authority to suspend water rights,'' said Kansas Agriculture Secretary Jamie Clover Adams. ``We can issue a cease and desist order if you had a blatant overpumper.''
Arid southwest Kansas -- which leads the state in numbers of water rights -- is a major battleground for much of the state's water rights policy.
``We have an irrigation-based economy out here. Water is the economic lifeblood of everybody out here,'' said Steve Frost, executive director of the Southwest Kansas Groundwater Management District, in Garden City. ``It's a golden triangle. Irrigation fuels the grain supply, which fuels the feedlots, which fuels the meatpacking plants. Water represents the amount of money it can produce.''
Frost oversees water policy and contends with water politics for the nation's second-largest groundwater district, which covers 5.5 million acres in southwest Kansas. About 97 percent of the district's water goes toward irrigation, he said.
``We use a lot of water here and we have a lot of water here,'' Frost said. ``The intent is to protect the economy, not destroy it. This water is producing exports that are going international.''
But Frost said the area has to find ways to get off an irrigation-based economy.
The 19th century water right ritual was a fairly straightforward one. If a person established a use for the water, the axiom of ``first in time, first in right'' determined water-right ownership.
In 1945, the Kansas Water Appropriation Act established water rights' def initions, permit procedures, usage regulations, and water rights records.
Vested with the power of overseeing water rights is David Pope, chief engineer for the state of Kansas. His job is within the state's Division of Water Resources, in the Kansas Department of Agriculture.
``Water itself is owned by the public,'' Pope said. ``People could seek a permit to appropriate water.''
For southwest Kansas, regulations and rules for water allocation are based on water availability, spacing of wells, water usage, and the amount of irrigation water necessary to produce crops during a 12-month period, Pope said.
The explosion of post-World War II farming and irrigation technology saw a similar leap in water rights' permits in southwest Kansas. So much so, Pope said, that there have been no new permits since 1978 for much of the area.
``The area has a large aquifer and historically developed large amounts of irrigation as compared to the rest of the state,'' he said. ``Western Kansas has more water in the aquifer, at least they thought they did.''
There are a total of 30,930 water rights in Kansas, with 9,670 issued for the area's groundwater management district and 2,620 for Finney County, said Tom Huntzinger, state water appropriations program manager.
``Southwest Kansas has way more than their fair share than any other part of Kansas,'' he said.
The 1945 water act was revised in 1978 to change the role of water monitors.
``It shifted gears from a service entity to an enforcement entity,'' said Mark Rude, local water commissioner for the state's division of water resources.
In 1988, penalties of $250 per water right were attached to water use reports found lacking in information.
Starting in the early 1990s, declining water availability and increasing farm demands could no longer be ignored.
Southwest Kansas farmers were required in 1992 to place water meters on their wells. Not all districts in Kansas require usage meters for their irrigators.
Overpumping was to risk state scrutiny and the risk of losing a water right for a year of farming.
In 1998, a formal state plan was developed on overpumping.
For the last two years, local water authorities have tried to determine which water rights in southwest Kansas are potentially being violated in terms of the amount of water usage and water being pumped from that water right.
Nowhere is the ambivalence regarding water usage violations more apparent than the state's Blatant Recurring Overpumping program, part of the 1998 effort to identify and punish farmers consistently violating their water usage allocations.
Last month, a new set of water rights regulations was amended to the 1945 act that increased levels of bureaucratic appeals for alleged overpumpers.
As secretary of the Kansas Department of Agriculture, Jamie Clover Adams oversees all public-sector aspects of farming.
``If there isn't compliance, then the chief engineer will use enforcement when appropriate,'' she said. ``This gives people ample opportunity to come into compliance. I don't think we're picking on anyone.''
Huntzinger, who wrote the new set of penalties for water overpumping, said they now more ``consistent'' with the water regulations.
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